


Cafuné

by lisachan



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: While Flint's away to retrieve Vane from Blackbeard's crew, Silver is left at the camp to fight against his fever.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38
Collections: COW-T - the Clash Of the Writing Titans





	Cafuné

**Author's Note:**

> I am now officially obsessed.
> 
> Written for this year's COWT #10, W6, M2, prompt: "Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese): the act of tenderly passing one's fingers through the hair of a loved one".

Living in John Silver’s feverish dreams is the sea and little else, if anything at all.

It is a living creature, in his mind, it has eyes and many, many mouths. It devours. 

It has a voice, also, it sings. The sea is a mermaid, its chant enchanting, trying to mesmerize you into falling to your death through its depths. Silver has heard that voice, he has followed that song many, many times. He never recognized it as a suicide attempt, but that’s what it was, at the end of the day, wasn’t it? There is no other reason a man should throw himself in the ocean, or put himself in any condition that might lead to that, even if just stepping on a boat, if he wasn’t, on some level, aching for his own death.

But there is no way to escape the hold of the sea, the sea’s got hands, which have a grip, enormous fingers wrapping around your body, keeping him still when you’re sailing it, drawing you back when you’re ashore. Like a jealous mother aching to be reunited with their lost sons, that’s what the sea is. How do you escape the call of your mother? Cutting ties is useless. The rope around your soul remains – the only bond not even death can undo.

Living in John Silver’s feverish dreams is Captain Flint, also. The _little else_.

Sometimes, the voice of the sea becomes his voice. And its eyes, his eyes, green and transparent and with such fathomless depth. One could get lost in them as he could get lost at the bottom of the ocean.

He dreams about Flint calling him – and is it really him, is it the call of the sea, is it the fever, is it death warning him of its arrival? Is it a warning or a welcome? 

John calls him in his sleep. Where are you. Why did you leave. Are you going to come back alive, are you going to win Vane back, are you going to let Blackbeard slice your throat, are you going to give us our war, are you going to keep your end of the bargain? But is this our war, really? Isn’t it perhaps yours, and yours alone, are we all just conscripts?

John swallows and he doesn’t know if he’s awake or asleep. His throat is dry, every inch of his goddamn body hurts. The leg – that leg hurts so bad he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better to just take it all off at the hip. (Would that have hurt less?)

Then someone touches him. Soothing fingers, cool, delicate. They stroke his forehead for a second, then move through his hair, damp with sweat and salty sea moisture. They run through his locks, untangling them, they count each curl, one by one. Someone sighs. There are voices. No. One voice. One person speaking. A faraway echo. A voice without words – just his name in a whisper.

The fever hurts. The voice calls him softly. He rides it out.

*

He wakes up the morning after feeling considerably better. He’s still hurting, the leg wound burns like hell, but the fever seems to be gone. There are voices, the camp is swarming with people. More people than there were when he fell asleep the day before. Flint must have come back. He wonders if he was able to secure Vane. He wonders if he’s back at all, perhaps he was defeated and only the rest of the crew made it back.

He drags himself sitting up on his hands, groaning loudly. All his muscles ache but he feels like moving. He knows they’re aching for lack of use.

He throws his legs off the bed, trying to get up, but that’s when he sees Madi standing next to the table, leaning against it. She’s wearing her usual stern expression, but there’s the shadow of a smile drawn on her lips, and he feels like smiling back.

He suddenly realizes. She must’ve been the one he felt last night.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You are welcome,” she answers, “Though you will have to find my medic and thank her, too, she is the reason why you are still alive today.”

“No…” he chuckles softly, “I mean, yes, I will thank her, surely, but I wasn’t talking about that. I felt you, tonight. Caressing my hair. That was comforting. So thank you for that.”

Madi says nothing for the longest time. She studies him intently in perfect silence, then finally speaks. “I was not here, tonight. Not for a moment.”

John blinks rapidly, the smile fading from his face. “Then, who…?” he starts, but he sees Madi turn towards the entrance of the hut and he follows her gaze.

On the door, there’s Flint. His eyes are the sea and for a moment John drowns.

“Are you better?” he asks.

John swallows and nods, and in doing so he ends up staring at his hands.

Madi leaves right after that, and Flint comes forth, sitting on the edge of the bed, next to him. The hay bedding shifts a little underneath his weight and John just can’t look away from those hands.

“I have Vane,” Flint says, “Blackbeard let him go.”

“Did you beat him?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

John finally looks back up at him. “Do I want to know?”

Flint offers him half an oblique smile. “It wasn’t gruesome, just complicated. We dueled. I was almost dead, Vane intervened. That broke Teach’s heart, as Vane surely knows. He’s working that out by himself, the sacrifice he just made to come back to us. But it’s done, and it’s been done cleanly, if that’s what you’re worried about. I didn’t manipulate anyone into doing anything they didn’t want to do in the first place.”

“You’d be able to make anyone believe they’ve always wanted to do something they’re just doing to actually please you,” John mutters under his breath.

Flint keeps quiet for a moment. Then he says, “I heard that.”

“Yeah, I know.” John sighs and cedes to the urge to lean on him, shoulder against shoulder. “I dreamed of you, tonight.”

Flint tenses, just a little. “What a nightmare that must’ve been,” he says.

“Partly,” John admits, “Then I felt you,” he looks down, again, and Flint’s hands. He’s fidgeting. “And I heard your voice. I thanked Madi when I woke up a few minutes ago, but I should’ve thanked you, apparently.”

“She took good care of you,” Flint says dismissively, “I can see that.”

John waits a second, then repeats. “I should’ve thanked you.”

He feels Flint swallow by his side. “You’re welcome,” the captain just says.


End file.
